The film the Rolling Stones don’t want you to see

Before any of the Rolling Stones make an appearance in Robert Frank’s notorious documentary about the band, a message dispatches a rare bit of bosh found in the film. A disclaimer reads, “Except for the musical numbers the events depicted in this film are fictitious. No representation of actual persons or events is intended.”

What follows is a blunt and at times maddening account of what it’s like to be on tour in the biggest rock band in the world. For the band, that means drugs, isolation and boredom. For the band’s various handlers, that means drugs and group sex. Films as frank as Frank’s are rare in rock ’n’ roll, which has become such a gentrified institution that no band in its right mind would dare allow a filmmaker to shoot what Frank shot. Fortunately, the Stones weren’t in their right minds in 1972.

The intersection of forces that resulted in the film with the lewd title that we’ll heretofore refer to as “C***sucker Blues,” is a fascinating one in retrospect. Robert Frank, now 88, is a Swiss-born photographer who was 12 years older than the oldest of the Stones at that time (bassist Bill Wyman, who later quit the band). Frank came to America in the late-1940s and began working as a fashion photographer. “The Americans,” a book assembled from two years of traveling and photographing people, was published in 1959 with an introduction by Jack Kerouac, but by that time Frank had turned his attention to making movies. He’s made more than 20 since 1959. Frank’s has Houston ties in that the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, archives his work and also distributes his film and video. The MFAH oversees a vast Frank collection, including more than 350 of his photographs, hundreds of photographs given to him by other photographers and model pressings for some of his books, including “The Americans.”

On Friday and Saturday, the MFAH will offer rare screenings of Frank’s film about the Stones’ tour in support of “Exile on Main St.”

It should be noted that “C***sucker Blues” isn’t quite the elusive cultural artifact it once was. The film can often be found on YouTube for those who wish to see a muted diminished version. For years it was available only on bootleg video after the Stones sued to block its release. A judge settled the dispute by allowing the film to be shown five times a year and only with Frank present, though those restrictions seem to matter less to the Rolling Stones today than 40 years ago.

Why was the band so concerned about the film? Well, its previous foray into filming an American tour went poorly as Albert and David Maysles documented the bedlam at the 1969 Altamont Speedway concert during which a concert attendee brandished a pistol and was stabbed and beaten to death by the Hell’s Angels, who were a poor choice for the free concert’s security crew.

The decision to return to America three years later with a filmmaker in tow was a questionable one. And at the time, Frank was given complete access to the band, with no restrictions whatsoever. Despite the disclaimer at the film’s outset, his film, with blunt realism, captures the excess and despair of a successful touring band of that era. There are moments of rock ’n’ roll release when the band takes the stage — particularly a jam with Stevie Wonder — but more often the documentation reveals the kind of uncomfortable tedium that leads to television sets being hurled from hotel balconies for no reason other than the brief mischievous rush. And that moment is among the more animated ones. More revealing are quiet frames of guitarist Keith Richards asleep or, more likely, passed out, as he certainly is backstage at some arena, slumped into a shapeless heap while singer Mick Jagger visits with Atlantic Records exec Ahmet Ertegum.

Alienation is a theme most obviously stated when the band takes an impromptu trip through the Deep South. They’re at their most obviously foreign during those scenes, yet it’s also the most comfortable they get as documented by Frank’s film. Those scenes find the band’s members at their least guarded and most animated. Less obvious in “C***sucker Blues” is the internal alienation between the band members. Drummer Charlie Watts seems withdrawn — if not from the band, certainly from the cameras and the entourage. And while Jagger and Richards sing splendidly together as they did on “Exile on Main St.” — they’re filmed listening to a test pressing of “Happy” from “Exile” (its cover photographs provided by Frank) — their future rift seems to build from fissures captured by Frank: Jagger further courts fame with ostentatious attire and celebrity friends backstage, while Richards moves toward a forest of addiction.

Richards told his side of those years in his biography. Jagger hasn’t really addressed it. Both have resolved any issues sufficiently to undertake an upcoming American tour that, 40 years after the one in “C***sucker Blues,” certainly will not be documented in the same way. Frank’s footage was unforgiving, but between the film’s funny disclaimer and its coy credits — which assigned “roles” like “junkie soundman” — it felt honest.